pertain to philosophers; the physical and psychical to poets; and the mixed, to the mysteries; since the intention of all mysteries is to conjoin us to the world and the Gods." And thus much for the different species of fables according to the excellent Sallust. Previous to a development of some of the fables of Homer, it will be requisite to observe that this most divine poet, by combining fiction with historical facts, has delivered to us some very occult, mystic, and valuable information, in those two admirable poems, the Iliad and Odyssey. Hence, by those who directed their attention to this recoudite information, he was said, according to the tragical mode of speaking, which was usual with the most ancient writers, to have been blind, because, as Proclus' observes, he separated himself from sensible beauty, and extended the intellect of his soul to invisible and true harmony. He was said therefore to be blind, because that intellectual beauty to which he raised himself, cannot be perceived by corporeal eyes. Thus too Orpheus is tragically said to have been lacerated in an all-various manner, because men of that age partially participated of his mystic doctrine. The principal part of it however was received by the Lesbians; and on this account his head, when separated from his body, is said to have been carried to Lesbos. Hence the Platonic Hermeas, conformably to this opinion of the hidden meaning of the Iliad, beautifully explains as follows the Trojan war, in his Scholia on the Phædrus of Plato. 2 "By Ilion we must understand the generated and material place, which is so denominated from mud and matter, (apa Ty ¡λuv xai tηv vλny) and in which there are war and sedition. But the Trojans are material forms, and all the lives which subsist about bodies. Hence also the Trojans are called genuine (10ayevels). For all the lives which subsist about bodies, and irrational souls, are favorable and attentive to their proper matter. On the contrary, the Greeks are rational souls, coming from Greece, i. e. from the intelligible into matter. Hence the Greeks are called foreigners, (enλudes) and vanquish the Trojans, as being of a superior order. But they fight with each other about the image of Helen, as the poet says [about the image of Eneas]; Around the phantom, Greeks and Trojans fight.3 In Plat. Polit. p. 398. 2 Instead of αναλογοι ψυχαι in this place, it is necessary to read αλογοι ψυχαι. 3 Iliad V. v. 451. Helen signifying intelligible beauty, being a certain vessel (EλEVON TIS OUσa), attracting to itself intellect. An efflux therefore of this intelligible beauty is imparted to matter through Venus; and about this efflux of beauty the Greeks fight with the Trojans [i. e. rational with irrational lives']. And those indeed, that oppose and vanquish matter, return to the intelligible world, which is their true country; but those who do not, as is the case with the multitude, are bound to matter. As therefore the prophet in the tenth book of the Republic, previously to the descent of souls, announces to them how they may return, [to their pristine felicity] according to periods of a thousand and ten thousand years; thus also Calchas predicts to the Greeks their return in ten years, the number ten being a symbol of a perfect period. And as in the lives of souls some are elevated through philosophy, others through the amatory art, and others through the royal and warlike disciplines; so with respect to the Greeks, some act with rectitude through prudence, but others through war or love, and their return is different [according to their different pursuits]." It may also be said, that by the Greeks and Trojans, Homer adumbrates the twofold orders of mundane natures, arising from a division of the universe into the incorporeal and the corporeal, and from again dividing the incorporeal into the more intellectual and the more material natures; but the corporeal into the heavens and the sublunary region; the heavens into contrary periods; and the sublunary region into opposite powers. And that he also adumbrates through these, the powers of an opposite characteristic, which subsist in the mundane Gods, in dæmons, in souls, and in bodies. "Hence, says Proclus,2 Homer when energising enthusiastically, represents Jupiter speaking, and converting to himself the twofold co-ordinations of Gods; becoming himself, as it were, the centre of all the divine genera in the world, and making all things obedient to his intellection. But at one time he conjoins the multitude of Gods to himself without a medium, and at another through Themis as the medium : Conformably to this, Proclus in Plat. Polit. p. 398, says, "that all the beauty subsisting about generation [or the regions of sense] from the fabrication of things, is signified by Helen; about which there is a perpetual battle of souls, till the more intellectual having vanquished the more irrational forms of life, return to the place from whence they originally came." For the beauty which is in the realms of generation is an efflux of intelligible beauty. ? In Tim. p. 300. "But Jove to Themis gives command to call For this Goddess pervading every where collects the divine number, and converts it to the demiurgic monad. For the Gods are both separate from mundane affairs, and eternally provide for all things being at the same time exempt from them through the highest transcendency, and extending their providence every where. For their unmingled nature is not without providential energy, nor is their providence mingled with matter. Through transcendency of power, they are not filled with the subjects of their government; and through beneficent will, they make all things similar to themselves; in permanently abiding, proceeding; and in being separated from, being similarly present to, all things. Since, therefore, the Gods that govern the world, and the dæmons the attendants of these, receive after this manner unmingled purity, and providential administration from their father; at one time he converts them to himself without a medium, and illuminates them with a separate, unmingled, and pure form of life. Whence also I think he orders them to be separated from all things, to remain exempt in Olympus, and neither convert themselves to Greeks nor Barbarians; which is just the same as to say, that they must transcend the twofold orders of mundane natures, and abide immutably in undefiled intellection. But at another time, he converts them to a providential attention to secondary natures, through Themis, calls upon them to direct the mundane battle, and excites different Gods to different works." 2 As to the recondite meaning of the Odyssey, the opinion of Numenius the Pythagorean appears to me to be highly probable, that Homer in the person of Ulysses represents to us a man who passes in a regular manner over the dark and stormy sea of generation; and thus at length arrives at that region, where tempests and seas are unknown, and finds a nation, "Who ne'er knew salt, or heard the billows roar." Odyss. xi. 122. and xxiii. 270. "For indeed," says Porphyry," it will not be lawful for any one to depart from this sensible life in a regular way, and in the shortest time, who blinds and irritates his material dæmon; but 'Iliad. XX. v. 5. 2 i. e. In the highest and purest intellectual splendor. 3 De Antro Nympharum p. 271. he who dares to do this will be pursued by the anger of the marine and material Gods, whom it is first requisite to appease by sacrifices, labors, and patient endurance; at one time by contending with perturbations, at another time by employing stratagems of various kinds, by all which he transmutes himself into different forms; so that at length being stripped of the torn garments by which his true person was concealed, he may recover the ruined empire of his soul. Nor will he even then be freed from molestation, till he has entirely passed over the raging sea, and taken a long farewell of its storms; till, though connected with a mortal nature, he becomes, through deep attention to intelligible concerns, so ignorant of marine and material operations, as to mistake an oar for a corn-van." Porphyry adds, "Nor is it proper to believe that interpretations of this kind are forced, and are nothing more than the conjectures of ingenious men; but when we consider the great wisdom of antiquity, and how much Homer excelled in intelligence, and in every kind of virtue, we ought not to doubt, that he has secretly represented the images of divine things under the concealments of fable." Walworth. T. TAYLOR. MISCELLANEA CLASSICA. NO. XI. [Continued from No. XLII. p. 280.] I. Elmsl. Annot. in Eurip. Med. p. 150, not. ad init. “Nihil apud Atticos poëtas rarius vocali & ante particulam av elisa.” 1i. e. Becoming purified through the exercise of the cathartic virtues; Porphyry elegantly alludes to this denudation through the exercise of these virtues, in the following passage, in his excellent treatise De Abstinentia. Lib. I. p. 27. Απολυτε αρα τους πολλούς ημιν χιτώνας, τον τε ορατον τουτον και σάρκινον, και ους εσωθεν ημεί εσμεθα, προσέχεις οντας τους δερματινοις· γυμνοι δε και αχιτώνες επι το σταδιον αναβαι νωμεν, επι τα της ψυχης Ολυμπια αγωνισομενοι. i. e. “ We must therefore divest ourselves of our many garments, both this visible and fleshy garment, and those with which we are inwardly clothed, and which are proximate to the cutaneous vestments. But we must enter the stadium naked, and without the encumbrance of dress, strenuously contending for the Olympia of the soul." Mr. Elmsley has forgotten to qualify his observation by confining it to the third persons singular of verbs: see the note itself. II. Remarks on the "Hints to form the Ovidian Distich,” inserted in No. XLIII. of Clas. Journ. p. 221-224. Art. 1. "Four verses out of five, or nearly so, commence with a dactyl." A dactylic commencement is likewise more frequent in pure heroics, though not in the same proportion, especially in Virgil, who employs the opening spondee at least as frequently as any of the Latin poets. 2. "When the sense of the first line overflows by a single word into the second, that word almost always forms a dactyl, or a trochee. The exception to this rule is very rare, and takes place perhaps only with a verb: Inde duæ pariter, visu mirabile, palmæ Surgunt ex illis altera major erat." In heroics, likewise, a spondaic word at the beginning of a line, followed by a pause in the sense, appears generally to be avoided as a fault by the best writers. 6. "The trisyllabic ending is avoided in the short line." There is indeed only one instance, we believe, in the whole of Ovid, in which the short line ends with a trisyllable; it occurs either in the Tristia, or the De Ponto, but we are not able to refer to the passage. 7. A somewhat similar rule holds with regard to the successive stanzas of our own Elegiac metre, commonly so called, (see Gray's Elegy,) and the octo-syllabic quatrain,' one of the most pleasing of our shorter measures. The occasional interlacement of the couplets in heroic rhyme is perhaps a more parallel instance. 'We shall be excused for quoting a beautiful illustration from Lord Byron : "Oh! who like him had watch'd thee here? Or sadly mark'd thy glazing eye, Lines to Thyrza. |